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Operations and Intelligence: Keeping Pace with Special Forces Missions
Keeping pace with Special Forces missions
by Maj. Rex H. McTyeire
Designed for experienced NCOs from all 18-series MOSs, this intense program prepares NCOs to become assistant operations-andintelligence sergeants and to assume staff positions at all levels.
If carefully selected, highly motivated and well-trained soldiers are a definition of Special Forces, then the Special Forces Operations and Intelligence Course defines the operational capabilities of those soldiers and their units.
Special Forces demands excellence from its soldiers in all aspects of their jobs. Often, their responsibilities far exceed the skills of a single career field or military occupational specialty. Special Forces personnel-selection procedures and training programs reflect this fact. Only proven soldiers are selected for Special Forces training, then their qualification-course training, continuous unit training and additional specialized schooling builds on this professional base to create the scope of capabilities for which Special Forces is known.
Originally an entry-level course during the 1960s, on par with the other four basic Special Forces MOS-producing courses (18B weapons, 18C - engineer, 18D medic and 18E - communications), O&I has evolved over the past 27 years to provide Special Forces Adetachments with the personnel and skills necessary to train, plan, operate and succeed in their missions. Now taught by the Special Warfare Center and School’s Company A, 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training Group, O&I has become the definitive mid-career challenge to Special Forces NCOs.
Much more than just another Special Forces skill, O&I “ties it all together” — just as the basic SF courses build on the previous military experience of their students, O&I builds on the mid-career experience of SF soldiers. It refines, focuses and extends their experience and adds new skills critical to the operational capability of SF units.
O&I specifically trains SF NCOs to fill assistant-operations-and-intelligence-sergeant slots on operational detachments; however, the instruction goes much further. Generally, training covers general and special subjects, clandestine-operations subjects, tactical-intelligence subjects, and operations-related subjects. Key elements of the training define special-operations command-and-staff relationships and detail staff functions and responsibilities at all echelons, preparing NCOs to fill staff positions up to and including jointlevel assignments.
Operational A-detachments are much more than well-led groups of expert medics, engineers, communicators and weapons men. They must be prepared to deploy and fight as an independent organization, manage much of their own training, prepare for deployment on a wide range of missions, function as a planning cell, perform their own staff responsibilities, and coordinate with a variety of external contacts from all services and at all echelons. As a team, members of the ODA must manage an array of intelligence functions that else-
where in the Army would require several staff offices with many personnel and different MOSs.
The demands of training and planning are complex, but when teams deploy on missions, their responsibilities increase significantly. On a foreign-internal-defense mission, for example, the detachment may be responsible for its own security, staff and management functions while training a hostcountry staff to support the forces which the same detachment is teaching basic military skills. In an unconventional-warfare mission, the detachment may have a similar function in an even more isolated area, with communication and support from higher headquarters limited to periodic radio contact. The requirements for survival, combat effectiveness and mission success in such a situation demand that soldiers receive intense training which cuts across a variety of military specialties and proponency areas.
O&I is also a prerequisite for some advanced and selective Special Forces training programs such as the 180A Special Forces Warrant Officer Program. Graduates of O&I qualify for MOS 18F, but they must request the MOS change from their basic 18-series MOS. (Currently, 18Ds and 18Es are in a critical shortage, and conversion from those MOSs may be difficult, but soldiers who request it will be considered on a case-by-case basis.) Regardless of the Special Forces career path a soldier chooses, O&I is an essential career-development step. Falling between the Advanced NCO Course and the Sergeants Major Course in the Army NCO education plan, O&I neatly fills the gap in required Special Forces operational training.
Referring to O&I as an intelligence course could be a larger error than referring to an A-detachment as an infantry squad (and depending on the audience, will generate an equally emotional response). Intelligence skills and subjects are part of the training, but they are integrated into the course with operational planning and conduct portions to support the full scope of SF and special-operations missions.
Early classes sent students to Fort Holabird, Md., for intelligence training, and later to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., after the Intelligence School moved there.
Now, the entire O&I course is conducted at Fort Bragg, which allows better management of the course flow, and the tailoring of intelligence subjects by the Special Forces cadre ensures that the subject matter will be appropriate to special operations. The primarily 18F cadre is augmented by selected NCOs from the intelligence MOS who improve O&I training by providing experience in fields such as interrogation, intelligence analysis and order of battle. They also serve as liaisons with intelligence proponents to ensure the currency and doctrinal accuracy of the tacticalintelligence blocks of instruction.
As Special Forces has evolved over the years, the O&I course length and content have also changed. After growing to 16 weeks at one point, in 1988 O&I lost four weeks to the emerging 18-series Advanced NCO Course. The CMF18 common-skills subjects in these four training weeks, now a part of SF ANCOC, are building blocks to O&I. ANCOC completion is therefore important to provide the best possible academic preparation for O&I. Subsequent course modifica-
U.S. Army photo Students in the O&I Course work as a group during an operational planning practical exercise. Such exercises evaluate individual and group abilities to plan and conduct Special Forces operations.
O&I Course Prerequisites
■ SSG/E6 or above and 18-series MOS qualified. 1 ■ 3 years experience (AC or RC) in 18-series MOS in operational Special Forces unit. 1 ■ Minimum of 12 months’ service remaining upon com-
pletion of the course.
■ Final SECRET security clearance, with hard-copy docu-
mentation.
■ Airborne-qualified male on current jump status, with a
minimum of one static-line jump completed within the 3 months prior to start date.
■ Command verification of APFT passed within 30 days
prior to start date.
■ Graduation from Advanced Noncommissioned Officer
Course (ANCOC). 1, 2
1.May be waived for sister-service special-operations personnel with equivalent qualifications and experience in their respective SO units. 2.Special Forces ANCOC scheduled to become a prerequisite effective
Oct. 1, 1990.
tions have brought O&I back to 13 weeks.
The course curriculum is one of the most academically intense and demanding in the U.S. Army. To meet the multi-disciplined requirements of Special Forces operations and the standards of the O&I course, soldiers are expected to be proficient in the critical components of many different intelligence, operational, and technical MOSs, as well as having significant SF professional knowledge and experience.
Many of the projects, commandpost exercises and practical exercises require the application of SF skills not taught or refreshed because of the course’s fast pace. Tailored external-proponency material such as intelligence, photography and some operations-related subjects are supplemented by general Special Forces- and specialoperations-oriented blocks that link the puzzle pieces together and adapt them to the special-operations environment.
The external-proponency subjects alone, if taken as they are taught elsewhere in U.S. Army school systems, would require approximately one full year of continuous schooling. The tight O&I classroom schedule is further intensified by student research projects and home-study requirements.
O&I academic standards are high, strict and consistently applied. A minimum score of 75 percent is required for each graded area, and students with two failing scores will be recommended for academic relief. The course attrition rate exceeds 20 percent — a significant figure, since this is not an entry-level course, but an advanced school for selected SF career NCOs. Since the adoption of the current standards and grading scheme, only one class has defeated the 20percent attrition statistics: SFO&I Class 1-90 suffered only a 13-percent academic loss. Cadre members challenge each class to be the first to graduate 100 percent.
Resident students consistently have their favorite subject areas: the blocks on Special Forces photography and clandestine operations usually head the popularity list. Although intense and academically tough, these blocks involve handson application and interesting practical exercises, and each student easily identifies the value of the training to ODA operational
U.S. Army photo A student team deploys during the O&I field training exercise. The FTX is a week-long performance-oriented exercise to evaluate what students have learned in O&I.
requirements. The week-long endof-course field training exercise is also very popular and gives the students opportunities to apply much of what they have learned throughout the course. The FTX consists of an isolation phase, an airborne infiltration of the exercise area, and student field projects, including a message pick-up; link-up with indigenous assets; and receiving, identifying and exfiltrating an evader.
Among the more controversial blocks of instruction, both with students and proponency reviewers at all levels, are the order-of-battle blocks and the intense training on Soviet order of battle, organization and structure. These subjects, however, are critical to many related O&I blocks. O&I students are trained to tie their specific intelligence preparation of the battlefield, or IPB, and order-of-battle knowledge and the balance of their tactical-intelligence training into the existing operational scenario. Soviet order-of-battle subjects provide the illustration necessary for students to develop a thorough understanding of intelligence operations and specific ODA mission activities and support requirements.
Soviet order of battle is the bestdocumented and the most current of what is available in the Army and Department of Defense systems, and it is maintained in readily available student references. Overall, in spite of its depth and complexity, Soviet order of battle presents the best possible student training model. Creating an artificial order of battle for training or using a simpler Third World model would result in significant lost training value, with few gains.
Students need to understand and be able to apply conventional intelligence-analysis systems in order to train host-country conventional forces in a FID environment. In many of the possible UW scenarios and other SF mission contingencies, opposing forces will apply elements of Soviet doctrine, equipment and organization.
In mid- to high-intensity conflict scenarios, SF or special-operations deployments may be conducted to
O & I Course Synopsis
General and Special Subjects–
■ SF Photography and Filmless Camera System ■ JSOA and SOF Mission Planning ■ Fingerprint Identification Systems ■ Maps and Overlays w/Foreign Maps and
Symbols
■ Target Interdiction, Analysis and Systems ■ SOF Case Studies and Research ■ SOF NBC Doctrine
Tactical Intelligence Subjects–
■ Intro. to Intelligence; Order of Battle and IPB ■ Collection, Processing, Dissemination and the
Intelligence Estimate
■ Imagery and Infrared Map Interpretation ■ Soviet Forces, Organization, Equipment and
Capabilities
■ Soviet Military History, Doctrine and Power
Projection
■ Soviet Electronic Warfare and NBC Threat ■ World Threat and NBC Updates Clandestine Operations Subjects–
■ Introduction, Security, Operational Skills and
Techniques
■ Non-technical Communications: Applied
Techniques and Procedures
■ Intelligence Limitations and Constraints ■ Elicitation, Interrogation and Interviews
Operations Related Subjects–
■ Introduction, OPSEC and Classified
Document Control
■ Training Management ■ Assisted E & E and Detachment Evasion
Planning
■ Tactical Deception Operations ■ Combat Orders: Battalion, Brigade and Higher ■ SOF Command and Control ■ SOF Staff Roles, Responsibilities, Planning
and Estimates
■ Aircraft Capabilities and Conduct of Airborne
Operations
O&I in CMF18 Career Progression
ARMYWIDE CONVENTIONAL ASSIGNMENTS
SPECIAL FORCES ASSESSMENT & SELECTION
SF BNCOC SF QUALIFICATION COURSE
18B WPNS 18C ENG 18D MED
18E COMO
3 YEAR MINIMUM OPERATIONAL SF ASSIGNMENT
SF ANCOC
OPERATIONAL SF ASSIGNMENT
180A SF WARRANT PROGRAM O&I 18F ASST O&I
ADD'L OPN'L
ASSIGNMENTS: –SWCS INSTRUCTOR –NOMINATIVE SOF ASSIGNMENT
18Z ODA OPNS SERGEANT
SF–SOF ASSIGNMENTS ECHELONS ABOVE ODA
SGM ACADEMY
support larger conventional operations, and a clear comprehension of the intelligence systems and doctrine applied at higher echelons will enable SF ODAs and B- and C-detachments to make a more valuable contribution to theater tactical or strategic objectives. O&I graduates, with their skill in IPB, as well as Soviet order of battle and doctrine, will be critical to this effort in SF operational and staff positions.
Another debated aspect of the course involves a recent significant change to the program of instruction. Area studies, for years a standard student-production effort in the curriculum, have been deleted as a graded student project.
Current SWCS philosophy maintains that ODAs will not produce detailed area studies, but will have them provided as part of the intelligence support to SF operations. The ODA will then apply the area study to unit and pre-deployment training and supplement it with specific mission-related area research, since mission-area analysis and area assessment remain team missions.
Area studies are still taught in O&I, but now as a planning tool rather than as a product of the ODA. Each student receives a completed area study and is assigned a related research project. The area study and research project are then applied in the training-management and operational-planning phases of the course. Students develop mission-essential task lists and graded programs of instruction from their area study, individual research and mission scenarios.
The area-study and mission-planning changes tie in to other course changes. Targeting-analysis and targeting-systems blocks have also been brought on-line to fit into a comprehensive SF team-level mission-planning sequence called the Combined Area Study Mission Analysis Program. Developed in the field by the 10th Special Forces Group to fill an operational planning gap, CASMAP was expanded by the 5th Special Forces Group and has been integrated into O&I.
The program is a set of comprehensive operational-preparation procedures which outline support and staff-management functions from A-detachment through SFgroup levels in support of team training, preparation and deployment needs. CASMAP guides team and support actions from garrison training through operational preparations, isolation, deployment, area assessment, exfiltration and afteraction procedures to ensure continuity between operational and support elements.
Advances and changes in special operations and SF have accelerated in recent years, with each step forward generating doctrinal and training changes in the O&I course. Special Forces, as an Army unit and as a career field, is improved every time an SF NCO steps to the podium to receive his O&I diploma, prepared to take his knowledge back to the field. Every O&I graduate knows that he has done far more than punch a career ticket: by completing O&I, he has identified himself as a member of the pool of
Upcoming changes to O&I
Soldiers considering O&I or scheduled for attendance should be aware of two changes which will become effective Oct. 1.
Students who report for O&I training after that date will have the 18F MOS posted to their records upon graduation from the course. O&I graduates currently receive an additional skill identifier upon graduation and may apply for the 18F MOS after they return to their units. SF units have shown shortages of soldiers in 18F because O&I graduates’ records were not being updated, according to Sgt. Maj. Robert Gron, SF enlisted manager in the SWCS Special Operations Proponency Office. The new procedure will allow the Army to keep better track of 18Fs. Soldiers’ units will still determine whether the MOS will be their primary or secondary.
Also effective Oct. 1 will be the requirement that soldiers attend the Advanced NCO Course before being eligible for O&I. Activecomponent soldiers will have to attend the SF ANCOC, given at the SWCS NCO Academy. Reserve-component SF soldiers may use any ANCOC to qualify until the SF ANCOC-RC comes on-line, scheduled for August 1991.
leadership from which will be drawn future SF warrant officers, SF team sergeants and specialoperations sergeants major and command sergeants major. He is a senior professional among a group of exceptional professionals: Special Forces noncommissioned officers.
Maj. Rex H. McTyeire currently commands Co. A, 2nd Bn., of the Special Warfare Center and School’s 1st Special Warfare Training Group. He served more than nine years enlisted time on Adetachments in both engineer- and assistant-operations-and-intelligence-sergeant slots before attending Officer Candidate School. His assignments have included duty with the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 10th Special Forces Groups as well as 46th Company, S.F., Thailand. His overseas experience includes serving on a mobile training team to Somalia, varied national-intelligence assignments for U.S. Army Operations Group, and other nominative special-operations assignments. Ranger- and scuba-qualified, Maj. McTyeire is a charter member of the Special Forces Branch and holds degrees from New York State University at Albany.
